Residence and citizenship planning is becoming a more deliberate part of how internationally minded families organise their lives. Where a family can live, study, work or move at short notice may matter as much to its long-term flexibility as the location of its financial assets.
Henley & Partners advises on residence and citizenship options for private clients and works with governments on residence and citizenship programmes. Dr. Guenther Dobrauz-Saldapenna, Managing Partner in Zurich for Europe West/North, describes the client conversation as starting with a blank sheet of paper: a family’s background, ambitions and concerns come first, followed by the options that might serve them.
Demand is coming from different directions. Some families want to accommodate children whose lives will span several countries; others want access that their existing nationality does not provide. Dobrauz-Saldapenna sees particular interest from the United States and Asia and renewed attention across Europe, while building local teams to serve clients in their own markets. His central point is that useful options take time to establish.
Key Takeaways
Geographic choice belongs in family planning: Dobrauz-Saldapenna asks where a family may need to live or gain access in future, alongside how it diversifies investments.
Clients have different starting points: For some, additional residence rights are about a family spread across borders; for others, citizenship can materially change access to travel, education and opportunity.
US, Asian and European interest is rising: He sees Americans exploring alternatives abroad and more enquiries from families in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, alongside continuing Asian interest also in Europe.
Planning needs a long lead time: Residence and citizenship routes depend on individual eligibility and programme requirements; they are rarely an answer to an immediate crisis.
Henley & Partners is strengthening local coverage: His priorities include the structure of the Europe West/North business, hiring country specialists and meeting clients where they are based.
The next generation is already international: His son’s interest in studying in Japan illustrates why younger family members may think beyond one home country as a matter of course.
Less familiar destinations can enter the discussion: The Naoero citizenship programme is one example, although the suitability of any route depends on the family and its circumstances.
Starting With the Family
Henley & Partners took its present form in 1997 and has built an international advisory business around residence and citizenship planning. Dobrauz-Saldapenna says a useful conversation begins before any particular programme is proposed. His team first asks about a client’s history, where relatives live, what they hope to do and what they worry may change.
He resists describing the work simply as selling passports. The aim, he says, is to assemble what he calls a “private geographical portfolio”: a set of potential places to live and rights of access that fits the family’s circumstances. That might include a residence option in one country and, if appropriate and available, a route to citizenship in another. Neither is a substitute for the legal, tax and personal advice needed to assess the consequences of a move.
The language deliberately echoes investment diversification. He points to the Rothschild family’s historical presence in five European cities as an illustration of spreading activity across borders. For his clients, the practical question is what options a family would want if its work, education or circumstances took it somewhere new.
Two Reasons to Look Beyond One Country
Dobrauz-Saldapenna sees one group of clients planning for lives that are already dispersed. Parents may remain in one country while children study, work or build families elsewhere. The assumption that each generation will stay close to its place of birth is becoming less useful for those families.
The second group starts with more limited freedom of movement. He calls nationality a “life lottery”: the passport a person is born with can affect travel and access to opportunities, including education. For such clients, a second citizenship or residence right can have a different urgency from the optionality sought by someone who already has broad access.
These are broad patterns rather than a standard client profile. He says the detail changes with each family, which is why the initial conversation must establish the people and their objectives before examining possible jurisdictions.
Demand From the United States, Europe and Asia
The United States is currently a major source of interest for Henley & Partners, Dobrauz-Saldapenna says. Many American families are considering options outside the country, and those with European connections often look back to Europe. The firm also hears from Asian families interested in European residence, as well as clients considering other regions.
Within Europe, he singles out Germany, France and the United Kingdom as markets where more families are thinking about geographical diversification. Politics, taxation and geopolitical uncertainty all enter those conversations, though the mix of concerns differs from one client to another. The common request is for greater flexibility over where a family might base its life.
That interest does not necessarily mean an immediate move. Some clients want an option in place while continuing to live and work where they are. In his view, residence and citizenship decisions make more sense when taken before circumstances force them.
Key Priorities
Dobrauz-Saldapenna’s remit covers Henley & Partners’ Europe West/North region, including the Zurich office and teams in Germany, Austria, Poland, Latvia and Armenia. The firm is continuing to organise its European operations around more clearly defined country responsibilities and local entities. He says this work occupies much of his time as client demand shifts between markets.
A European operation designed around an earlier pattern of demand needs people and structures suited to the clients it serves now. His other priority is recruiting colleagues who know their local markets and can draw on the wider Henley & Partners network.
“The most important thing is that you meet your clients and you meet them also on their ground,” he says.
Some visit the office, but many prefer an adviser to travel to them. He also wants the regional team to keep up with new programmes across the firm’s international network, then judge which are relevant for the families they meet in Europe.
Into the Future
Making Plans Before They Are Needed
Dobrauz-Saldapenna expects the demand for options to grow from two quite different impulses. One is positive: younger people already form relationships and imagine futures across borders. His teenage son, for example, named Japan when asked where he might want to study. For the father, who grew up with a more local frame of reference, the answer was a reminder of how naturally the next generation thinks internationally.
The other impulse is uncertainty. Conflict and political or economic change can make a family reconsider where it wants to live, but residence and citizenship planning generally cannot be completed overnight.
“If you need a passport tomorrow, we can’t help you. But if you need a residence or a passport in a few months or a year or two that’s where we can help you to roll out a well-structured plan,” he says.
That is why he talks about a plan C or D, rather than a single fallback destination. The purpose is to understand possible routes early enough to assess eligibility, practical needs and the consequences for the whole family. It is also why destinations that would once have been absent from a client’s thinking may now merit examination.
A Broader Map of Possibilities
Naoero is one of many example he raises. Henley & Partners is involved in the country’s Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Program as it also is in many others. He says clients are considering places they might previously have overlooked as they think through where their family could go. That widening map makes it necessary for advisers to understand programmes across the firm’s network and bring relevant options back to clients in their own markets.
Getting Personal with Dr. Guenther Dobrauz-Saldapenna
Dobrauz-Saldapenna was born in Steyr, Austria, a city with a strong industrial history but grew up in the beautiful countryside close by. He studied law at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, completing a master’s degree and doctorate, and later took an MBA at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Further executive education at Harvard, IMD and Singularity University fed an early interest in innovation and venture capital which continues till today.
An opportunity through his father brought him to Zurich to work in one of Switzerland’s early venture capital firms, an area that had long interested him. The financial crisis then took his career back into law, a return he had not planned. He spent about 13 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, eventually leading its Swiss legal practice and serving on its global legal leadership team.
After his parents passed, he returned to Austria to attend to family office matters. He later received a call from Henley & Partners’ chairman Dr. Christian H. Kaelin asking him to lead the Zurich office. The role brought together his experience in wealth and legal work with his interest in how families arrange their lives across countries.
His son practises judo, which helps explain his interest in studying in Japan, a competitive centre for the sport.
Music has been a lasting interest. He began collecting vinyl at about 14 and estimates that he now has 30,000 records, roughly 1,000 of them signed. He recalls waiting outside concert venues, sometimes until two in the morning, for band members to emerge and sign the records he had brought. Danzig, Deep Purple, and Alice Cooper are among his favourites; his father introduced him to Deep Purple.
The record player has its own story. After struggling with Latin at school, he was promised one wish if he passed. He chose a Linn record player, without his father realising that obtaining one then meant a trip to Scotland. Dobrauz-Saldapenna passed, his father kept the promise, and he worked for two summers to buy the speakers to go with it. He stayed with vinyl when much of the music market moved to CDs.
He has also written or edited 12 books, mostly on law, innovation and venture capital, and teaches at universities in Austria and Switzerland. He values the chance to share what he has learned and to have younger students challenge his ideas.